


stars of hope in dark despair

by tielan



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 06:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12007005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: There’s no palm trees, no sand, no watery inlets, no tower – not anymore. Yet Chirrut knows exactly where he is. He can feel it – hope and success in the midst of death and destruction – that this was both the ending and the beginning, like the tale of an ancient snake who endlessly swallowed its tail to represent time unending...





	stars of hope in dark despair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



There’s no palm trees, no sand, no watery inlets, no tower – not anymore. Yet Chirrut knows exactly where he is. He can _feel_ it – hope and success in the midst of death and destruction – that this was both the ending and the beginning, like the tale of an ancient snake who endlessly swallowed its tail to represent time unending...

Baze is with him, of course.

 

_The new Guardian in the temple is faint in the Force, but strong in the flesh. His voice is rough and unmelodic, but he sings the canticles and the chants with gusto, even if without tunefulness. And the hand which reaches out to guide Chirrut’s steps – unnecessary, thank you – is strong and callused._

_Chirrut can’t see Brother Baze. He doesn’t need to;  
the intensity of Baze’s purpose is as focused as a lightsaber blade._

 

They stand in dust and ash, caked over a glittering glass shore.

Perhaps ‘stand’ is a misnomer. The places they go aren’t anywhere or anywhen that either of them have recognised as significant, although they do recognise where they are. And there’s no reason to it that they’ve found; they come, they go, they flow through the universe, present and yet not.

They are one with the Force, and the Force is with them.

 

_The Jedi brings him from his village to the temple of the Whill Guardians. “You’re too old for the order,” she says, her tone apologetic as they soar for the stars in her ship.  
“But you’re too strong enough to leave untrained.”_

_Chirrut remembers the feel of her mind,  
soft and cool as the clouds he would sense coming over the village fields._

 

Chirrut knows the stranger approaches long before Baze sees him. The way the Force burns around him like a halo – one might as well try to hide a bantha in a meadow. And he senses their presence, although it seems to take him a moment to notice them standing there.

“You’re not real.” He says it with a note of wonder. “Are you?”

Chirrut laughs. “What is real?”

“We’re not alive, if that’s what you ask.”

“ _The Force is in everything and with everything and through everything..._ ” The Jedi grimaces, as though the memory of the words pains him. “How do you...do this?”

“We didn’t,” Baze says when Chirrut doesn’t answer. “One day, we’re dead on a burning beach. The next, we’re back on the beach talking to Jedi.”

 

_The temple receives a steady stream of visitors, even apart from the locals who bring offerings to the temple, support and succour for the Guardians. But every now and then, there come others._

_The Jedi stand apart during the feast-day, neither smiling, nor communing when the city mingles in joyful celebration of the new season. Chirrut offers the young_ padawan _a rice-cake and a smile,  
but the boy’s brows flicker in a frown._

_His mentor is even less polite. “Purveyors of pablum. Useful in their way, but no match for a Jedi.”_

 

“I’m not a Jedi.” The denial is swift and grim. “I didn’t complete my training.”

“Why not?” But even as Chirrut asks, he knows the answer. The young man wears his pain like a cloak – and no wonder.

Conceived within the Force, cradled in it, he was born in pain, to bear pain, to cause pain. Grief and tragedy is woven through him, every cell of his being is stitched with suffering. From the other side of life, Chirrut can see the destiny that clings to the Jedi, like a black shadow stretching out from his feet, ready to swallow him up.

And yet, in the midst of all that pain and darkness burns a seedling flame.

 

_They travel out from the temple now and then, he and Baze. All Whill Guardians travel from their temples for a while, to get a better feel of the universe, to see what may be seen, to connect with other Whill Guardians, and – as is sometimes necessary – to give aid where they may._

“ _Useta be we’d see your kind at least once a year,” says the old man. “Not so much anymore. Mind, we don’t never see no Jedi. Y’all gone insular. Course,” he adds, “them Jedi always were.”_

 

The Jedi took children so young they were barely weaned from their mother’s breasts, and brought them up loyal to the Order so that they might not be tempted by partisanship. And yet in doing so, they disconnected the Jedi from a power greater than even the Force.

Love.

Whill Guardians were taught to be part of a community – and more. They were taught to be part of the community of their temple. They were taught to give help to the needy, to succour the helpless, to not overlook small evil in the fight against the great evils.

Blind as he is, Chirrut can see that this Jedi who is no Jedi is part of a community which he values and is valued by. That he is part of a family who loves him and whom he loves.

_Rogue One._

_Welcome home._

_Good luck, little sister._

_May the force be with us._

 

“They needed me.” His right hand clenches, the knuckles tightening although they don’t go white – there’s no blood in them to go white. “They still do...”

“Yet you stand here on a barren shore,” Chirrut notes.

The Jedi swallows. “I couldn’t—”

“You’re afraid.”

“Yes. My father...” His voice trails off as he looks around at the slagged crater. “This was Scarif, right? The facility from which the Death Star plans were stolen? I flew in Rogue Squadron against the Death Star, and again at Hoth. Wedge named it after you.”

He pauses, and the thought resonates through him so strongly that Chirrut has no trouble in following it back to its roots.

 

_He didn’t need to see the Council’s faces to know that Jyn’s answer would be no._

_And yet, for some fires, merely a spark would do._

_A spark, to grow to a flame, to burn a planet to ash and brittle core, to burn a soul to the bone._

I am your father.

 

Chirrut catches his breath at the unexpected revelation – a secret to rock the galaxy should it ever be known.

“Yes,” says Vader’s son, having followed Chirrut’s thought in that moment. “Hero of the Rebel Alliance and blood of Vader’s blood.”

Horror lurks in his voice, the grief and loss and pain of discovery as tensely edged as the trip back to Yavin IV from Eadu. And with the fear comes the darkness, a hatred of what he is, what he could be, what tempts him. Heroism linked with power, admiration bound up with adulation, and the black portent that stretches out before him – the curse of his blood, the destiny that shrouds his future...

And yet, in that shadow, something gleams.

 

“ _The Empire comes for kyber crystals.”_

“ _And our choices are to give them up and live, or to die and know they go to destroy the galaxy.”_

“ _Or both.”_

 

“Close your eyes,” he commands and waits until he senses the younger man close his eyes. “You are one with the Force, and the Force is in you.”

Baze huffs, the softest of laughters. But Vader’s son doesn’t laugh as he breathes out and then in again, with a focal concentration that’s more of the Whill Guardians than the Jedi Masters, who taught their students to use the Force effortlessly, with no more thought than breathing.

“The Force is with me,” he murmurs, and while it’s not a mantra, it’s a reminder, for he breathes out the last word like a prayer’s end. “ _Always._ ”

Then his breath jerks on a startled inhale.

“Can you feel it?” Chirrut asks him quietly. “Can you reach it?”

It gleams like a star in the night sky, like hope in the darkness of despair, and in spite of the destruction around them, it’s survived. Which makes it not entirely unlike the Rebellion, all told.

There’s nothing left of the chain from which it hung; just the crystal itself, raw and unfaceted, humming with potential.

“Whose was it? Yours? No,” he corrects himself immediately. “Jyn Erso’s...”

“It’s yours now.” Even as Chirrut says the words, he feels something settle in him. And he may be blind, but through the Force, he sees Jyn’s kyber crystal as a bright slash of green in the young Jedi’s hand – the culmination of hope and the promise of a future free of the Empire. “May the Force be with you.”

 


End file.
